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Schools monitor students' posts on Facebook, Twitter

By Michael Hartwell, mhartwell@sentinelandenterprise.com

Updated:
01/14/2013 12:18:54 PM EST

FITCHBURG -- For years students have been punished by their schools or even the courts for messages they posted on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, but how do officials find these troublesome messages and how do they separate a discernible threat from a melodramatic teenager?

"This office is paying attention to everything. Good, bad, evil everything," said Robin Duncan, vice president for marketing and communication at Mount Wachusett Community College.

The school has a new media specialist tasked with looking for mentions of the school online. That ranges from negative or positive comments about the school that can affect its reputation to students who write they intend to harm themselves or others at the school.

She said when they first pitched the idea to the college, they were asked, "What is this person going to do, sit on Facebook all day?"

The answer was yes.

MWCC was one of the first schools to monitor social media on a dedicated level, according to Duncan, and was recognized for being proactive by the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations.

"If you don't have someone paying attention to your new media ... you're being negligent," she said.

Duncan said staff in her office are trained to detect warning signs. So far they have not had to intervene on any major threats but have spoken to some students about issues that needed to be defused with a conversation.

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"It's no different than any students walking on campus or talking to one another. We use the same methodology," she said. "We don't have a different practice simply because of the tool being used."

One thing that is different with online communication is tone. Duncan said things can come out differently than intended online, and if the message can be taken as a cause for concern, they err on the side of caution and investigate further.

"It's not black and white," said Duncan. "There's some subjectiveness to it, and it takes good training and judgment." She said the staff will discuss posts they are not sure about and look to what other schools have dealt with to learn more.

Fitchburg Police Department Community Liaison Sgt. Glenn Fossa said online messages lack the inflections of voice a verbal message would have. Something meant to be a joke may come out very wrong, and they have to figure out what the message really means.

Fossa said his department does not have any officers tasked with monitoring social media, but they come across them in their personal online activities or community members may report suspect messages.

"Generally speaking, we have to be careful that words in and of themselves may not be criminal," said Fossa. "For criminals cases, there has to be some level of connection or nexus to a plan of undertaking a criminal activity."

Speaking in general and not on any specific cases, Fossa said one thing that elevates the likelihood of the seriousness of a suicidal or threatening message is specific details listed in the message.

"When there's very specific words that show intent, the next thing that police frequently do is look for other supporting evidence," said Fossa. The big three things they try to discover are motive, opportunity and ability for a crime.

"For example, say a 5-year-old says he's going to drive his dump truck into a public building," said Fossa. The boy doesn't actually have a dump truck, and even if he did he wouldn't be able to reach the pedals. That issue would be handled very differently from someone who was a gun owner who said he or she were going to shoot someone.

"Every single case is different," said Fossa.

Ralph Hicks, superintendent of Ashburnham-Westminster Regional School District, said school employees do not monitor social media, but they let the police in district's two towns handle any potential problems.

Hicks explained that the legal doctrine "in loco parentis," which is Latin for "in place of a parent" allows school officials to interfere in the lives of students only in issues involving the school. If they became aware that a student is severely depressed, they would be able to offer the student advice for dealing with the problem or contact other authorities but could make no direct action unless the school was involved in the problem.

He said the district has not had any major cases involving social media, but a previous district he worked in was able to use social media to investigate a conflict between students.

Several girls stole a school sweatshirt from another girl and put it in a toilet and posted photos on MySpace.com. Hicks said they could see from the photos that it was in a school bathroom and were able to discipline the students because of evidence brought to them by social media. If it had occurred off school grounds, they would not have had jurisdiction over the incident even though all the parties are students.

Fossa said social media has been a great benefit to law enforcement by giving people a stage to make their private lives public. That could take the form of a threat being easily proven and traced or photographs revealing something a suspect denies in court. He gave the example of a case where a suspect said he didn't own a gun, but police found pictures of the suspect with handguns online.

He said some larger police departments do have dedicated personnel who monitor online activity, just as the federal government looks online for terrorist or threats against public officials.

Fitchburg State University spokesman Matt Bruun said his school is putting more eyes on social media this year.

"The university monitors the traffic on our own social media portals, and when issues from individuals' social media pages are brought to our attention we respond as we deem appropriate. Such instances are rare, however, and usually warrant only an educational conversation," he said.

Bruun said FSU is preparing to launch a new Facebook application for incoming students that will allow them to meet and interact. He said the application will be expanded to the entire campus community, including alumni, and there will be multiple staff members who monitor what goes on inside the application.

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